Blog

By listing the thinking and acting characteristics of the Materialist worldview in The Philosophy Of Freedom, a personality type unfolds. Materialists who think seek to explain everything with thoughts of the physical world and physical processes. Even thinking is explained as a result of material processes. However, the significant characteristic of the true Materialist is that he does not examine his thoughts, does not think about thinking. While appearing to be awake and active, the Materialist is asleep. Life is a mental picture dream without the awakened state of thinking. They lack any real individuality, as their character and thoughts are determined by corporate advertising, their family, ethnic tribe, or their social group. To know them you just have to know the tribe they are a member of. Since they don't know what to do they may seek a God to guide them. They are happy in this immature state as their tribe or God is on the side of Good while Evil is found in the “other”.

Materialism: They stick to what makes the crudest impression on them, the physical world. Materialism seeks to explain everything with thoughts of the physical world and physical processes.

Materialism worldview in Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy Of Freedom
1.1 Materialist in action: Determinism: A Reason Always Compels Action
“Freedom cannot consist in choosing, at one's pleasure, one or other of two possible courses of action. There is always a perfectly definite reason why, out of several possible actions, we carry out just one and no other.”

2.1 Materialist pursuit of knowledge: Physical World
Materialism seeks to explain everything with thoughts of the physical world and physical processes.

3.1 Materialist thinking: Unaware Of Own Thought Processes
Does not observe his own thinking processes.“I observe the table, and I carry out my thinking about the table, but I do not observe that thinking.'

4.1 Materialist perception: Generalize Experience
Walking through the fields a partridge is discovered to be the source of a rustling noise. The mental process used was to generalize experience. “Because we have experienced countless times in life that a disturbance of the stationary position of small bodies is accompanied by the movement of other bodies existing among them, and because we have therefore generalized the relation between such disturbances and such movements, we consider this particular disturbance explained as soon as we find it to be an example of just this relationship.”

5.1 Materialist knowing: Mental Picture Dream State
“If the things of our experience were mental pictures, then our everyday life would be like a dream and knowledge of the true state of affairs would be like waking up.”

6.1 Materialist individual representation of reality: Perception Of Motion
“Every change in an object is perceived by us as a process of motion. This physiological fact can throw no light on the relation of percepts to ideas. We must find our way by some other means.”

7.1 Materialist cognition: Hypothetical World Principle
“The dualistic thinker cannot find the connection between his hypothetically assumed world principle and what is given in experience. A content for his hypothetical world principle can be gained only if one borrows it from the world of experience and deceives oneself about so doing.”

8.1 Materialist personality: Feeling Personality
“The naive realist sees in the life of feeling a life of the personality more real than in the purely ideal element of knowing.”

9.1 Materialist idea to act: Draw Ideas From Physical And Psychological Organization
“The conceptual system which corresponds to the external world is conditioned by this external world. The percept thus conditions directly its concept and, thereby, indirectly also its place in the conceptual system of my world.” This physical and psychological organization can bring about nothing with respect to the essential nature of thinking.

10.1 Materialist moral authority: Mechanical Necessity
“If the thing-in-itself is unthinking and acts according to purely mechanical laws, as modern Materialism conceives that it does, then it must also produce out of itself, by purely mechanical necessity, the human individual and all that belongs to him.”

11.1 Materialist purpose: Percept Cause And Effect
“In the process which we can analyze into cause and effect, we must distinguish percept from concept. The percept of the cause precedes the percept of the effect.”

12.1 Materialist moral idea: Find Concrete Idea
“Whenever the impulse for an action is present in a general conceptual form (for example, Thou shalt do good to thy fellow men! Thou shalt live so that thou best promotest thy welfare!) then for each particular case the concrete mental picture of the action must first be found.”

13.1 Materialist value of life: Find Out What To Do
“The world is the best of all possible worlds. A better world is impossible for God is good and wise. All that man need do is find out the counsels of God and to act in accordance with them. If he knows what God's purposes are concerning the world and the human race he will be able, for his part, to do what is right. From this optimistic standpoint, then, life is worth living. It must stimulate us to co-operative participation.”

14.1 Materialist individuality: Tribe Member
Lacks individuality. “A tribe is a whole, and all members of the tribe exhibit the peculiar characteristics which are conditioned by the nature of the tribe. The character and activity of the individual member are determined by the character of the tribe. If we ask why some particular thing about a person is like this or like that, we are referred back from the individual to the type.”